Happy Friday, GeekTechers! This end-of-the-week edition of GeekBytes is all about awesome things. That’s not to say that it isn’t always about awesome things, mind you; just that today there’s almost too much awesome to contain.

Remember that "unicorn lair" that archeologists allegedly found in North Korea? Apparently, they got it all wrong, and it was the lair of a dragon/deer/cow hybrid with a mane. I suppose back in the days of the Koguryo Kingdom, there were so many unicorns and dragon cow deer hybrids that they just lump summed them into “unicorn.”

German engineer Gregor Schaper has been hard at work in El Sauz, Mexico, building out large round solar panels. The panels cost a cool $4000-$5000 to make, but once they're up and running, you can make a taco for 60 people at a time. Is it worth it? I guess it depends on how good the taco is, right? I kid, I kid; it’s a tremendous idea since after the initial expenditure the upkeep of the panels is supposed to be low, so it should pay for itself in short order.

The Scanadu SCOUT is on deck to bring us all of our Star Trek scanning needs. It’s a little device that, when pressed to your temple, takes a multitude of measurements, including heart rate, blood oxygen, pulse, and temperature. Sorry, it doesn’t seem to detect sickness or disease—yet. What it does do is feed this info to your iPhone or Android phone, so there’s that. Who needs McCoy, anyway?

Move over, Curiosity; you aren’t the only kid on the block taking awesome space pics anymore. The folks behind the, ahem, Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST for short), has decided to show us some amazing 268-megapixel images of deep space. It looks like about a million people will now have a new desktop background. My only question is, will the VST start posting on Twitter, too? [via The Verge]

Jason Kennedy Contributor, TechHive

Jason is a systems administrator living in Seattle. When he's not up to his elbows in a server, he's up to his elbows in the latest electronics or technology news, or trying out languages like Dart and Ruby.More by Jason Kennedy